Defending Christendom against Islamic Jihad: Jean de La Valette

Abrutal battle, at which nothing less than the future of Christendom was at stake, raged this week in June some four-and-a-half centuries ago. Indeed, the sacrificial lamb, Fort Saint Elmo, fell on June 23.

But because it did, the Island of Malta held out.

At great cost was purchased the time for the princes of the Catholic West to set aside their jealousies and build the fleets sufficient to confront the troublesome Turk, bound and determined to make Saint Peter’s Basilica a mosque, just as he had done to the Hagia Sophia a century before.

Christendom delivered the coup de grace at Lepanto in 1571 under the 24-year-old Don John of Austria, but the sea battle that saved the West would never have been fought, much less won, had it not been for the heroic leadership of a much older man six years before.

The 71-year-old warrior who—alone and against impossible odds—led his soldier monks in the defense of Malta in 1565 was Jean Parisot de la Valette.

If ever a man took Luke 9:61-62 to heart it was this descendant of the crusading counts of Toulouse. At 20 he joined the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem. He never returned home.

Born in 1494, he matured into the fullness of a type forged four centuries prior in the crucible of the Crusades, something that was then altogether new: the monk of war, a cleric whose vocation it was to lead a life of prayer and work centered on the Divine Office and the Rule of Saint Benedict, in a cloister apart from the world, but also to train for war and to shed the blood of the enemies of Jesus Christ on the battlefield.

By the late 16th Century, of the three Military Orders, only the Knights of Saint John survived, but in the heart of Grand Master Jean de la Valette burned the same fervor and singularity of purpose that fired the hearts of the soldier monks who had manned the ramparts of Acre and had fallen on the the fields at Hattin.

His fellow warrior the Abbé de Brantôme described La Valette as “tall, calm, unemotional, and handsome.” Another admirer said he was “capable of converting a Protestant or governing a kingdom.” A master of languages, he spoke French, Latin, Italian, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. He had more than paid his dues. Already a seasoned veteran at 47, he sustained a severe wound in action against the Barbary Corsairs, the outcome of which battle sentenced La Valette to a year pulling a Turkish galley oar.

More glorious, though doubtless no less demanding, were the abundant posts he had held throughout the Order, including Governor of Tripoli and General of the Fleet, the first Frenchman to hold a post traditionally given to Italians. Under La Valette, the Galleys of the Knights of Saint John sailed forth from Malta’s magnificent natural harbor and practiced, if you will, a kind of Christian piracy, boarding and seizing Turkish merchantmen carrying goods from France or Venice to be hawked in the markets of Constantinople. For this reason, the matrons of the Sultan’s harem hated the Knights of Malta, for these ladies accumulated great wealth speculating in glass and other Venetian luxuries.

Soleiman the Magnificent, however, was a strategic thinker. He knew that Malta’s harbor, unequalled in the Mediterranean, would afford him a forward base from which to continue his raids on the coast of Italy. With the greater control of the sea that Malta would afford him, he could at last bring Venice to heel. An invasion of Sicily would not be out of the question, nor would aid to the Moriscos in Spain.

The Sultan’s greatest dream, however, the dream of all Turks, was the conquest of the “Red Apple.”

Rome.

Malta was a stepping stone to Rome.

Soleiman had crossed swords with the Knights of Saint John early in his reign. La Valette had been there. In 1522, a Turkish force, of, in the end, some 200,000, besieged the Knights’ stronghold on the Island of Rhodes. For six months, 700 Knights and 6000 local auxiliaries, held out against the Turks. The holy Knights exacted casualties from Soleiman equaling half his force, but when their supplies and ammunition were exhausted, and their own force inadequate to man the walls, Soleiman agreed to allow the garrison to surrender on terms. Rhodes was evacuated and the Knights, after a sojourn in Siracusa, set up a new fortress on the Island of Malta.

The Christian West had known for years that Malta was the object of Turkish desire, but when the Knights’ extensive Mediterranean intelligence network noted an aggressive galley-building effort in Constantinople in the fall and winter of 1564, La Valette accelerated the construction of his defenses and called all the Knights of the Order home to stand and fight.

On May 18, 1565 the Ottoman fleet was spotted offshore. That night, the Grand Master led his warriors into their chapel where they confessed and then assisted at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

“A formidable army composed of audacious barbarians is descending on this island,” he told them. “These persons, my brothers, are the enemies of Jesus Christ. Today it is a question of the defense of our Faith. Are the Gospels to be superseded by the Koran? God on this occasion demands of us our lives, already vowed to His service. Happy will be those who first consummate this sacrifice.”

To be sure, La Valette knew how many of his Knights would fall. The plan he had devised was to hold Fort St. Elmo as long as he could until a relief force from Spanish Sicily could be mustered.

Fort St. Elmo, poorly designed, and poorly constructed, indeed, not even completed, commanded the northeasternmost point of the mountain peninsula that bisected the island’s four-mile, deepwater harbor. As long as the fort stood, the Turks could not take the harbor, and if they could not take the harbor by autumn, the Ottoman fleet would be wrecked in the gales of October.

From his headquarters across on the south side of the harbor at Fort St. Angelo, La Valette saw to the defenses of the rest of the island, and to the carefully measured defense of St. Elmo.

Slowly buying time with human lives, the lives of his fellow Knights, La Valette kept St. Elmo manned by shuttles across the harbor, sparing no more than were absolutely needed. The Brethren manning St. Elmo rained liquid fire, rocks, boiling oil, fire hoops, and musket ball down on the attacking Turks. Writing daily to Spain’s Viceroy in Sicily, La Valette underscored what both sides knew: the island’s necessity to Christendom. But Spain dragged her feet, and La Valette continued to send willing men to the walls of Saint Elmo. Over eight thousand Turks were slaughtered in the siege, and many of La Valette’s 700 knights and their men-at-arms did consummate the sacrifice to which he had called them in May, but when the fortress at last fell after 31 days on 23 June, the Knights of Saint John had so depleted the Turkish ranks, that a Turkish conquest of Malta was now in doubt. Indeed, Mustafa, the Turkish commander, cried aloud, “Allah! We have paid so dearly for the son! What shall we pay for the father?”

Enraged by the price they paid for Saint Elmo, the Turks cut out the hearts of the fort’s dead defenders, nailed their corpses to crucifixes and sent them floating across the harbor toward La Valette. His response is not easy to approve, but easy enough to understand. Decapitating Turkish prisoners taken in fighting on the opposite side of the harbor, he fired their heads from his cannons back at the Turks now occupying St. Elmo.

The conduct of the battle for the island did not improve from there, but La Valette, concealing his increasing certainty that relief was unlikely never allowed his men to waiver. The day following the fall of St. Elmo was the Feast of Jean Baptiste. La Valette addressed his men: “What could be more fitting for a member of the Order of Saint John than to lay down his life in defense of the Faith? The defenders of Saint Elmo have earned a martyr’s crown and will reap a martyr’s reward!”

The Turks, now infested with disease from bad water, offered terms.

La Valette refused.

For the next two months the Turks threw themselves at the island’s remaining strongholds, Fort Saint Angelo and Fort Saint Michael. Throughout the fighting, La Valette was ever to the fore of the defenses, inspiring courage in his men and fear in the Turks, who quickly spread the belief that they had seen demons at sides defending him.

Angels must have stood by his side, for Europe did not. While the kings of Christendom stood idly by expecting the island fortress to fall, La Valette and his Knights held their island against an Ottoman army of nearly 60,000, including 6500 of the Sultan’s elite Janissaries. Three quarters of the Turkish army were killed over the four-month siege, and, on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, as the Ottoman survivors turned and straggled back to Constantinople, the heart of Christian Europe began to beat again for the defense of the Faith.

The man who had given the heart of Europe some much-needed resuscitation was Jean Parisot de la Valette.

For a recorded lecture by Christopher Check on the Battle of Lepanto please visit Catholic Answers

Risposte a questa discussione

it seems history is repeating itself, with just a few trying to defend so many. The trouble this time is the leaders of Europe are actively appeaseing the islamic aggressor. Protecting our christian based society is not high on anyones list. Protecting their selves seems more important. Weather your a christian or not you'd think our way of life is preferable to living under the sharia. Why people arn't prepared to stand up for their freedoms a bit more always surprises me.

Just think where we'd be if La Valette had done a runner back to Toulouse.

'The Siege of Malta in 1565 was a clash of unimaginable brutality, one of the bloodiest - yet most overlooked - battles ever fought. It was also an event that determined the course of history, for at stake was the very survival of Christianity.'

History's bloodiest siege used human heads as cannonballs By JAMES JACKSON Last updated at 01:40 07 July 2007

A hot and fetid June night on the small Mediterranean island of Malta, and a Christian sentry patrolling at the foot of a fort on the Grand Harbour had spotted something drifting in the water. The alarm was raised. More of these strange objects drifted into view, and men waded into the shallows to drag them to the shore. What they found horrified even these battle-weary veterans: wooden crosses pushed out by the enemy to float in the harbour, and crucified on each was the headless body of a Christian knight. Scroll down for more...

The clash of great faiths: Orlando Bloom in the film Kingdom Of Heaven This was psychological warfare at its most brutal, a message sent by the Turkish Muslim commander whose invading army had just vanquished the small outpost of Fort St Elmo - a thousand yards distant across the water. Now the target was the one remaining fort on the harbour front where the beleaguered, outnumbered and overwhelmed Christians were still holding out: the Fort St Angelo. The Turkish commander wished its defenders to know that they would be next, that a horrible death was the only outcome of continued resistance. But the commander had not counted on the mettle of his enemy - the Knights of St John. Nor on the determination of their leader Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, who vowed that the fort would not be taken while one last Christian lived in Malta. On news of the grotesque discovery of the headless knights - many of them his personal friends - Grand Master Valette quickly ordered that captured Turks imprisoned deep in the vaulted dungeons of the fort be taken from their cells, and beheaded one by one. Then he returned a communiquè of his own: the heads of his Turkish captives were fired from his most powerful cannon direct into the Muslim lines. There would be no negotiation, no compromise, no surrender, no retreat. We Christians, the Grand Master was saying, will fight to the death and take you with us. The Siege of Malta in 1565 was a clash of unimaginable brutality, one of the bloodiest - yet most overlooked - battles ever fought. It was also an event that determined the course of history, for at stake was the very survival of Christianity. If vitally strategic Malta fell, the Muslim Ottoman Empire would soon dominate the Mediterranean. Even Rome would be in peril. The Muslims had hundreds of ships and an army tens of thousands strong. The Christians were a ragtag bunch of just a few hundred hardbitten knights and some local peasant soldiers with a few thousand Spanish infantry. Malta looked doomed. That the Hospitaller Knights of St John existed at all was a minor miracle. They were a medieval relic, an order established originally to look after ailing pilgrims to the Holy Lands during the Crusades 300 years earlier - other orders of the Crusades, such as the Knights Templar, had been extinct for two-and-a-half centuries. They came from countries all over Europe: Germany, Portugal, France, Spain. All that united them was a burning desire to defend Christendom against what they perceived as the ever-encroaching tide of Islam. Yet by the 16th century, an age of the increasing power of nation states, these trans-national zealots were viewed as an embarrassing anachronism by much of Europe. Already the Turks had forced them from their earlier home, the island of Rhodes. Now the knights had moved to Malta - and were threatened once more. So savage was the fighting, so mismatched the two sides and so important the moment, that I chose the Siege of Malta as the subject of my latest novel, Blood Rock. It was the stage, as we thriller writers say, for epic and mind-blowing history. But as I researched for my book, I came to realise that what happened on Malta more than 400 years ago is salutary in today's context. For as we know only too well, religious extremism, terror tactics and barbarism still exist. Malta was no mere siege. It teaches us many things: the need for courage and steadfastness by an entire populace in the face of threat; the fragility of peace; and the destructiveness of religious hate. Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey and pitiless ruler of the Ottoman Empire, stared out upon the glittering waters of the Golden Horn estuary of Istanbul. He was the most powerful figure on the planet - his titles included Vice-Regent of God on Earth, Lord of the Lords of East and West - and Possessor of Men's Necks on account of his habit of beheading servants who displeased him. His realm and absolute remit stretched from the gates of Vienna to the gardens of Babylon, from Budapest to Aden. He was one of the richest men of all time who never wore the same clothes twice, ate off solid gold plates encrusted with jewels, and took his pleasure in a harem of more than 300 women. An octogenarian, he was utterly ruthless, employing an assassination squad of deaf mutes to strangle traitors. (The reasoning was that they could never be influenced by the pleas for mercy of their victims, nor tell any tales.) Suleiman had used them to dispatch both his Grand Vizier (his prime minister) and his favourite sons. Less worthy subjects could be executed by pouring molten lead down their throats. Yet by the standards of the day and his own dynastic line he was not especially violent. Other sultans had done worse: one, tiring of his womenfolk, had drowned his entire harem - some several hundred strong - in muslin sacks at the bottom of the Bosphorus; a second had written into the royal prerogative that he could shoot ten or more citizens a day with his bow and arrows from the roof of his palace. Suleiman controlled the greatest fighting force in the world. Before him lay an armada of 200 ships ready to sail, an army of 40,000 troops on board. He planned to wipe the barren rock of Malta and the Knights of St John from the map. These knights lived by raiding and disrupting his Ottoman shipping routes. The last straw had been their capture of the prized ship of his powerful courtier the Chief Black Eunuch. Because all his "parts" had been cut off by a clean sweep of a razor - a metal tube had been inserted into his urethra and the wound cauterised in boiling oil - the eunuch was also entrusted to look after Suleiman's harem. The Sultan did not expect undue trouble exacting his revenge. A mere 700 knights stood in his way. Such a rabble would be quickly cleared. The Turkish fleet headed across the Mediterranean in March 1565. Aboard the ships were the elite janissary shock-troops - the "Invincible Ones" - who had carried Islam across Europe with the slashing blades of their scimitars. Accompanying them were the blackplumed cavalry corps and the infantry as well as the drug-crazed Iayalars who wore the skins of wild beasts and whose raison d'etre was to reach paradise through death as they slit infidel Christian throats in battle. In late May 1565, the invasion force arrived at the island. The knights awaiting them enjoyed good intelligence of their plans and had asked for assistance from the Christian armies of European nations. Every kingdom spurned their request - other than Sicily, which said that if the knights held out, help would eventually come. You have probably never heard of Fort St Elmo. It is a small star-shaped structure sited at the tip of what is now the Maltese capital Valletta on the north shore of Grand Harbour. In late May 1565, it was where the full might of the Turk artillery was unleashed, a hellish crucible that would forge the future course of our modern age. For days the invaders pounded the tottering and crumbling edifice, reducing its limestone walls to rubble, creating a dust cloud. The knights refused to yield. At night, Valette sent reinforcements from St Angelo by boat across Grand Harbour, in the knowledge they were heading to their deaths. After the artillery, the attacks went in, wave upon wave of screaming and scimitar-wielding Turks, trampling over the bodies of their own slain, laying down ships' masts to bridge the debris-filled moat into which the walls of St Elmo had slid. Each time they were met by the ragged and diminishing band of defenders, fighting with pikes and battle-axes, firing muskets and dropping blocks of stone, throwing fire-hoops that set ablaze the flowing robes of the Muslims and sent them burning and plummeting to their deaths. The fire-hoops - covered in flax and cotton, dipped in brandy and coated with pitch and saltpetre - were the knights' own invention. Dropped blazing over the bastion walls, they could engulf three Turks at a time. For 30 days, cut off and doomed, the soldiers of St Elmo prevailed. The Turkish general had expected the fort to fall within three. Late at night on Friday June 22, 1565, the few hundred survivors from an original garrison of 1,500, sang hymns, offered up prayers, defiantly tolled their chapel bell and prepared to meet their end the next day. Those unable to stand were placed in chairs behind the shattered ramparts, crouching low with their pikes and swords to await the final assault. When it came, and the entire Turkish army descended as a howling mass, the handful of Christians still managed to fight for several hours. Eventually the Ottomans took their prize. The crescent banners of the Grand Turk flew above the ruins, the heads of the knights were raised on spikes, and the crucified bodies of their officers were floated across to Fort St Angelo on the far side of the harbour. The Turks had lost time and up to 8,000 of their crack troops. Summer heat was rising, disease and dysentery spread throughout the Muslim camp, and the dead lay piled around the blackened remnants of the seized fort. deserted the knights - the princes of Europe had abandoned them. But Grand Master Valette was not about to quit. Scenes of heroism and horror abounded in the terrible days that followed. There were extraordinary characters: Fra Roberto, the priest who fought on the battlements with a sword in one hand and a cross in the other; the two English "gentlemen adventurers" who arrived belatedly from Rome to take part in the action; Valette himself, who stood unyielding in the breach and used a spear to battle hand-to-hand against the foe. Others had led desperate sallies against the Ottoman, harrying their labour corps, sniping at commanders, spiking their guns. But the enemy, too, had their brave and vivid figures. Among them was Dragut, the most feared corsair of his day, whose skill and dash had served the Sultan well. A cannonball splinter did for him. Yet the siege continued, the target now St Angelo, the final and fortified enclave of the knights on the southern side of Grand Harbour. The Turks tried every twist and tactic in their military manual. They tunnelled beneath the Christian defences to bury gunpowder and blow the knights to bits. The Maltese responded with their own mines to blow up the tunnels and there were terrible skirmishes below ground. Next the Turks drew up siege engines, giant towers designed to pour their infantry direct on to the battlements. The knights removed stones at the base of the battlement walls so that they could run out cannon through the openings they had created, and blast the siege engines apart. On several occasions those walls were breached, the Turks rushing through eager to slaughter all in their path. Triumph seemed at hand but they found too late that the knights had improvised an ambush, creating a killing zone into which they were funnelled and slaughtered. Success for the Turks was slipping away. The furnace temperatures of July and August sapped morale and strength; the sense of failure clung as pervasively as the surrounding stench of death. The Turks' commander, Mustapha Pasha, marched inland to take the walled city of Mdina, only to withdraw when scouts informed him of its substantial and well-armed garrison. It was a trick. Mdina was largely undefended, its governor ordering women and children to don helmets, carry pikes and patrol the walls. Frantic, with casualties mounting and autumn storms looming, the Turks rolled a giant bomb - a fiendish barrel-shaped object packed with gunpowder and musketballs - into the Christian positions. The knights promptly rolled it back and it blew a devastating hole in the massed and waiting Muslim ranks. It rained. Believing the gunpowder of the knights to be damp, their muskets and cannon useless, Mustapha Pasha again sent his troops forward. They were met by a hail of not only crossbow bolts but gunfire, for Valette had anticipated such an moment, setting aside stores of dry powder. Finally, relief reached the knights in the form of a small army from Sicily. Believing the enemy reinforcements too weak to be of any consequence, Mustapha Pasha angrily ordered his troops - who had bolted on hearing of the new arrivals - to turn back and march towards them. It was the last of his many grave blunders. The cavalry of the relief force charged, then the infantry, tearing into the Turkish centre, putting it to flight. Rout turned to bloodbath. The once-proud Ottoman force scrambled in disarray for its ships, pursued across the island, cut down and picked off at every step. Thousands died and the waters of St Paul's Bay ran red. Of the 40,000 troops that had set sail in the spring from Constantinople, only some ten thousand made it home. Behind them they had left a scene of utter devastation. Almost the entire garrison commanded by Jean Parisot de Valette - after whom the city of Valletta is named - had perished. Now, after 112 days of siege, the ragged handful of survivors limped through the blitzed wreckage of their lines. Malta was saved, for Europe and Christianity. The Knights of St John had won. History has moved on - the island withstood another siege which played a key role in the saving of civilisation in the 1940s, this time against Hitler's forces. Today, the hotel and apartment developers have moved in. Rarely is the 1565 Great Siege of Malta mentioned. Hardly ever do visitors to the island dwell on such an ancient and forgotten incident. But I have stood in that tiny chapel recessed in the walls of Fort St Elmo, the very place where defenders took their last holy sacrament on a June night long ago. We owe those knights. Their sacrifice was immense, their effect on our lives more profound than we may know. Yet religious fanaticism continues, and global powers will still fight over a piece of barren rock. Perhaps we never really learn. ? Blood Rock by James Jackson is published by John Murray at £11.99.

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Most Western societies are based on Secular Democracy, which itself is based on the concept that the open marketplace of ideas leads to the optimum government. Whilst that model has been very successful, it has defects. The 4 Freedoms address 4 of the principal vulnerabilities, and gives corrections to them.

At the moment, one of the main actors exploiting these defects, is Islam, so this site pays particular attention to that threat.

Islam, operating at the micro and macro levels, is unstoppable by individuals, hence: "It takes a nation to protect the nation". There is not enough time to fight all its attacks, nor to read them nor even to record them. So the members of 4F try to curate a representative subset of these events.

We hope that free nations will wake up to stop the threat, and force the separation of (Islamic) Church and State. This will also allow moderate Muslims to escape from their totalitarian political system.

The 4 Freedoms

These 4 freedoms are designed to close 4 vulnerabilities in Secular Democracy, by making them SP or Self-Protecting (see Hobbes's first law of nature). But Democracy also requires - in addition to the standard divisions of Executive, Legislature & Judiciary - a fourth body, Protector of the Open Society (POS), to monitor all its vulnerabilities (see also Popper). 1. SP Freedom of SpeechAny speech is allowed - except that advocating the end of these freedoms2. SP Freedom of ElectionAny party is allowed - except one advocating the end of these freedoms3. SP Freedom from Voter ImportationImmigration is allowed -except where that changes the political demography (this is electoral fraud)4. SP Freedom from Debt
The Central Bank is allowed to create debt - except where that debt burden can pass across a generation (25 years).

An additional Freedom from Religion is deducible if the law is applied equally to everyone:

Religious and cultural activities are exempt from legal oversight except where they intrude into the public sphere (Res Publica)"